


After The Rain

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: Fluffy Angst, Multi, Oracle Arkhes' POV, Polyamory, Romance, Saint Seiya Rarepair Week 2020, Slice of Life, Universe Alteration - Otherkin, no beta we die like gold saints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26947624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: [Day 3: Conflict and Resolution] The Holy War inches up on the entire country, day by day until the next decade is right on their toes. For the Oracles, this is even worse. Sometimes, one needs a distraction from it all.
Relationships: Dryad Luco/Oracle Arkhes/Leo Ilias
Comments: 7
Kudos: 4
Collections: Saint Seiya Rarepair Week 2020





	After The Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Motherfucker this was a difficult one! I originally wanted to do something involving Luco's home plane, as he's fair folk, but that didn't plan out very well and it wasn't working, so while desperately trying to think of ideas I stumbled upon [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt3ynuQissw) and it finally gave me some ideas I could work with. So have Arkhes angsting over being a therianthrope with a job, which is very relatable to most therians I know.  
> So day three came about on day seven. Deal with it. I'll do the last two tomorrow - we have some AiaShion coming up, and some tragic Luco/Lugonis!

They called her a lot of things. They called her Oracle, they called her Priestess, they called her Witch sometimes, too, if they didn't want to acknowledge what she was. Truth be told, only she knew what she really was. She had simply no words for the experience, nobody to compare her experiences to. Even her fellow priestesses - they were seven strong, one High Priestess and six subordinates - couldn't have understood her if they tried.

She spent a lot of time alone. Watching the rain fall against the scrying pool, watching it mirror her tears. Listening to the wolves howling at the evening stars. She longed to join them. She wanted, more than anything, to join them. To trade silk robes for silver fur and prophecies for songs. But that wasn't how it was meant to work.

Oracles straddled the line between mortal and divine in a dance a demigod could never sway to. They were the chosen of Apollo, the haunted temples of Delphi, the speakers of Pythia. That was it, that was all. They were meant to sit on the edge of time and listen, and tell their words to those who needed them. They changed history. That was all they were meant to do, guide the river of time to flow as it needed to.

Any other abilities or magic were meant to enhance their divination. Anything on the side wasn't in the deal.

But it had to be, for her. There was no way she could have changed what she was, and she knew it only as an impossible thing. She was, after all, an impossible thing.

The evening she was assigned duty to watch the scrying pool and divine the rain was an evening her spirits were low, and for good reason. If she listened through the rain, and of course she did, in case any spirit happened to want to talk to her; she could hear the mournful howling. The howls belonged to the resident wolf pack that roamed not far from Delphi's borders. The guards and farmers always wanted them dead, and she always abandoned her duty to call them to her when the killing humans came out to hunt.

The evenings that her wolves were not with her were evenings she didn't want to experience. And yet, she still did.

The rain struck the pool and rippled through it, glassy blue and murmuring of things she didn't want to know about quite yet. A village in Italy, going down in flames, chanting ' _family, family, family lost and broken and finally found_ '. A Spectre, collapsing to his knees screaming, wings bared against the beaten wind. A Saint, arrow pointed, blood dripping down his cheeks. So many things she'd seen before. The omens only strengthened as she sailed down the river of time. It wouldn't be long before she couldn't draw a tarot spread without the Tower and the Wheel of Fortune pitching themselves at her with mourning, repetitive desolation.

Something shuffled beside her, and a ghost of a man settled down beside her. His hair was choppy and blond and his eyes were as blue as the rain. For a man who radiated innocence like naivety, he certainly did a lot of breaking and entering and ending up in places he wasn't allowed to be in.

"Hey," he said, and his voice was soft, and she didn't look up. She did, however, lean over to settle her shoulder against his. She wasn't allowed this, either. Men and wolves were off-limits to the priestesses, and if she was being honest, she was fairly certain the High Priestess couldn't tell the difference between the two.

Or maybe she understood that both could be kind to her, if she let them, and there were more kinds of men and wolves in the world than the ones that wanted to hurt her. 

"Hey, yourself," Arkhes answered. Ilias' cosmos flickered to her, reaching out, enveloping her with warmth. They were sitting on a marble bench under an awning, but it wasn't the warm summer rain, it was still chilly even if it wasn't windy. "Is everything quiet back in Sanctuary?"

"So far. Is it going to stay that way?" His voice was light, almost teasing. She scoffed, just a little, and flicked the tip of an ear he couldn't have seen and she didn't have. If she'd had a proper tail, she might have thumped it against the bench. But then again, humans didn't have tails. Not even priestesses could have them, no matter how badly they wanted them, how much they were supposed to have them.

"Hard to say. The rain doesn't tell me tomorrow, it tells me in a decade, and that decade doesn't look very nice." She didn't take her eyes off the scrying pool. She already knew what she would see in its depths, and the ending wasn't clear quite yet. She didn't know who she was meant to side with, either. If Athena won, nothing would change. If Hades won… She didn't know.

Death had its place. Death had, at some point, forgotten he was supposed to be a gatherer, not a hunter. And the outcome of the Holy War was clouded for now, hidden behind the turmoil and the agony that was the war itself. So many lives extinguished. So many pointless quests to gain an upper hand, and in the end, all that mattered was two lives, two bright flames. One a pale lavender, one a violet so dark it bordered on black. One would have to fizzle out, to pull back the curtain on the ending.

Ilias let out a soft, half-chirp of a noise, and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned over into him, drawing her knees up to her chin. He glanced over. She felt his eyes scan her form. He made another feline sound she understood as mild displeasure, and withdrew his arm long enough to shrug out of his overcoat and drape it gently around her shoulders.

It radiated warmth like Ilias almost always did, the tingling heat of a burst of lightning. He burned so slow, for a man who was meant to be light and quick on his feet. If it was up to her to decide what Ilias was, she probably would have gone for a nice chunk of tiger's eye, not a cat. And yet.

"You seem sad today," he murmured. His hand slipped to her chin and tilted her head towards him, away from the scrying pool. His eyes were just as blue. If she tried, she could have divined the very best outcome in the glitter of his eyes. "What's on your mind, Arkhes?"

She offered the barest trace of a smile, and wondered what would happen when a brave teenager reached a bit too far, and broke the circle of the last protection a dark flame had to remember his own blood by. If that dark flame remembered who he was to recognize that he was home, even if home didn't look the way it always had.

"I'm simply trying to do my job, Ili," she answered, and her voice came out more halfhearted than she meant it to. "You know I dislike focusing on anything else when I'm supposed to be on duty."

Something pressed against her other side, as large as Ilias and yet somehow different - bark and solid wood where Ilias was feline, or maybe the both of them had simply looked at the idea of humanity and said 'no, thank you, I think I would rather be a part of the forest'. A choice she didn't know how to make for herself. "I'd like to believe you, but I can't lie. You don't like not having something to focus on, I think, and you're annoyed we're not offering up enough of a distraction for you. Ili doesn't like getting wet, though. Should I remove my shirt? That usually provides a sufficient distraction for you."

Arkhes turned in her seat and glared at him, hands on her hips, a lot more of a reaction than she'd given Ilias. Luco, who had been resting his shoulder blade on her arm, looked on with a mild expression and an eyebrow raised. "Neither of you are allowed to be in here, and both of you are violating an astounding amount of rules. If you remove your shirt, you pass from 'trespassing' into the territory of 'asking the High Priestess to ban you from the city for the rest of your life'. That is a terrible idea, and you know better than to consider it."

Luco, who had kept his soft hazel eyes on her and a neutral expression on his face, cracked, a smile fighting its way onto his lips. "And there we have it, a sufficient distraction for our lady love. I thought that might work."

Arkhes sighed, deeply and with an impressive amount of irritation. Where she might have seen the best outcome of the Holy War in the sparkles of Ilias' eyes, she could have divined the worst of it all in Luco's. He didn't mean to be that way, she knew. But he knew a villain when he saw one, and he had always been a will-o'-the-wisp in the dark, guiding her home again. If anyone could have seen the bloodshed and tragedy without flinching, it was Luco, and the glitters of swamplight in his eyes could tell her all of it.

Sometimes she wondered how she had ended up with two men on her arm, both of whom were the very best of the gods they served, neither who could walk away from this unscathed. They were never going to. Which meant if she wanted to love them - and she did, more than she thought possible some days - she was never going to, either.

In glitters and sparkles and stars, she could chart a roadmap to get them both home safe and sound. She sighed, and managed a final smile. "How did I manage to get lucky enough that you were both off-duty long enough to come see me?"

Ilias smiled, slow and gentle and with the blinking of his eyes that she'd come to understand as love. "Lugonis, mostly." She nodded, understanding this to be more than enough of a reason. Luco's twin was a natural disaster disguised as a vaguely-human-shaped fair man, and if anyone could have allowed both of them time off completely by accident, it was him. She leaned up and brushed her lips against Ilias', before reaching for Luco and tugging him in, kissing him after. They both took her kisses and returned them with kisses of their own, Ilias with a rough purr and Luco with a whistling noise from the back of his throat that she couldn't have assigned to any creature or plant.

They both shifted closer to her at the affection, until she may well have been sandwiched properly between them, Luco's hands wrapped carefully around her abdomen to rest against one hip, and Ilias resting a hand just behind her tailbone on the bench, pressing his face directly into her hair. She allowed them both simply to stay there, leaning on each other, for a few moments, and turned her attention back to the scrying pool.

It would be so nice to simply slip into fur and four legs and run into the woods with both of them at her side, and not have to worry about an incoming, pointless war that would leave too many dead and far too many more forever scarred with the horrors of it all. 

Luco leaned in to kiss her again, looking faintly worried. She closed her eyes to savour it briefly before he pulled away again, hazel eyes gentle and concerned. "Something seems to be bothering you, Arkhes," he commented, voice soft. Ilias' shoulder bumped hers in affection, leaning closer. She sighed, pulling Ilias' coat closer around her, trying to find the words.

"I'm worried," she murmured. "The Holy War is drawing close enough that it's hard to see anything else. But I can't see the outcome of it, only what it's going to cost, and it's a bit depressing."

Luco paused, and nodded in sympathy. "I get it. The Meikai's all in a tizzy over it, they're training the apprentices harder than ever in preparation. They'll be the ones on the front lines, after all. But… We can't stop the fighting. All we can do is try to take the best course of action, try to lessen the casualties, and hope for the best outcome."

"I wish I knew what the best course of action _was_ ," she muttered. The rain started to lighten, a little, inching its way towards sunset. Ilias pressed a kiss to her temple, and she leaned into it.

"Maybe not yet, but soon enough," he answered. His voice was deeper than Luco's, and just as soothing. She didn't know how she got as far as she did without both of them by her side, carelessly breaking all the rules they could find if it meant she would only smile at them. "Patience, my love, as you keep cautioning us. You'll see it before too long, and we will know what to do. All in due time."

She nodded, her worries barely soothed even though his words were soothing, and she turned her eyes to the pool as the rain trickled to a stop. "There is one thing I know of that might help," Luco offered, looking up from behind his hair. He looked almost scarily young, when he did that. Young and innocent and almost like he hadn't seen more than he needed to. 

"I'm all ears, if it means it takes my mind off of all of this," she answered, wearily. "What sort of idea do you have?"

He raised a hand, suddenly full of a dark, primal, wild green fire she knew to be something not unlike cosmos and yet not at all the starlight she knew herself. "Bet I could turn you into a wolf until sunrise, and we can take a run through the woods." Luco's smile played at his lips like the weapon it was.

Arkhes blinked, straightening, relaxing her pose. Her suitors knew her a little too well. If they could offer her freedom of fur and a tail and a howling song, she would have given them just about anything for the opportunity. But ah, these were her boys, and they would offer it to her for free.

"I'd love that," she replied. "I think I would love nothing more, than a night on four legs out in the woods with the two of you."

Ilias pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, and Luco's smile only widened. Sometimes, it was all right to be just on the edge of humanity, after all.


End file.
